We had an amazing turnout at the “Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Cosplay and Fandom” panel at Dragon Con. It was only scheduled for an hour but since we had such an awesome and engaged audience we ended up keeping the panel going for over three hours.

Thank you to everyone who came out to make it the highest attended panel at this year’s Comics & Popular Arts Conference. It was truly exhilarating to be able to talk to so many intelligent people passionate about the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in comics, cosplay, and geek culture.

First up is Batman from Fernacular’s series If Male Superhero Costumes were Designed Like Female Superhero Costumes. Fernacular says that she was “tired of guys having no idea why girls find female superhero’s costumes kinda sexist” so she decided to enlighten them. Her goal was to make the viewer think of sex (“whether you want to or not”), make men uncomfortable, and highlight the ridiculousness of it all.

All of the raw data has been collected. It’s a massive amount and information and includes roughly 250 characters that appear across more than 300 individual comics.

Right now, I’m having a few associates proof the collected sex, race, and sexual orientation of all the characters. I’m also working out the best way to display the data. Once I get all the finer points ironed out I’ll publish a series of post examining the results so make sure to stay tune!

Transgender characters are still a rarity in superhero comics but hopefully this is changing. Just last month, each of The Big Two featured comics in which a transgender character comes out.

I’m thoroughly enjoying Matt Fraction’s run on FF. It’s a fun, offbeat book with a lot going for it. Mike Allred’s art and a Fraction written She-Hulk both stand out, but it’s Mik, Korr, Turg, and Tong that really steal the show.